The Victorians and Ancient Rome

The Victorians and Ancient Rome

Author: Norman Vance

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 1997-04-21

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 0631180761

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THE VICTORIANS & ANCIENT ROME Norman Vance has written the first full-length study of the impact on Victorian Britain of the history and literature of ancient Rome. His comprehensive account shows how not only scholars and poets but also engineers, soldiers, scientists and politicians gained inspiration from the writing, theory and practice of their Roman predecessors. The Roman theme is traced in nineteenth-century painting and music as well as literature and political discussion. There are chapters on the imaginative influence throughout the nineteenth century of five major Roman poets, framed by other chapters on Rome and European revolutions, nineteenth-century versions of Roman history, fictions of Rome, imperialism and decadence. Attention is also paid to the influence of developments in archaeology both at Rome and Pompeii and at Romano-British sites. Professor Vance provides a fascinating account of the sense of connection Victorian Britain felt with the Roman experience, a connection made the more complex because Britain had once been a Roman colony and because Christianity took hold and spread under the Roman Empire.


Ancient Rome and Victorian Masculinity

Ancient Rome and Victorian Masculinity

Author: Laura Eastlake

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0198833032

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Romans in Victorian literature are at once pagan persecutors, pious statesmen, pleasure-seeking decadents, and heroes of empire: this volume examines how these manifold and often contradictory representations are deployed in a range of ways in the works of authors from Thomas Macaulay to Rudyard Kipling to create useable models of masculinity.


The Ancient World on the Victorian and Edwardian Stage

The Ancient World on the Victorian and Edwardian Stage

Author: J. Richards

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2009-10-09

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0230250890

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The first study of the depictions of the Ancient World on the Victorian and Edwardian stage, this book analyzes plays set in and dramatising the histories of Greece, Rome, Egypt, Babylon and the Holy Land. In doing so, it seeks to locate theatre within the wider culture, tracing its links and interaction with other cultural forms.


The Colosseum

The Colosseum

Author: Keith Hopkins

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2012-06-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0674063597

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Byron and Hitler were equally entranced by Rome’s most famous monument, the Colosseum. Mid-Victorians admired the hundreds of varieties of flowers in its crannies and occasionally shuddered at its reputation for contagion, danger, and sexual temptation. Today it is the highlight of a tour of Italy for more than three million visitors a year, a concert arena for the likes of Paul McCartney, and a national symbol of opposition to the death penalty. Its ancient history is chock full of romantic but erroneous myths. There is no evidence that any gladiator ever said “Hail Caesar, those about to die...” and we know of not one single Christian martyr who met his finish here. Yet the reality is much stranger than the legend as the authors, two prominent classical historians, explain in this absorbing account. We learn the details of how the arena was built and at what cost; we are introduced to the emperors who sometimes fought in gladiatorial games staged at the Colosseum; and we take measure of the audience who reveled in, or opposed, these games. The authors also trace the strange afterlife of the monument—as fortress, shrine of martyrs, church, and glue factory. Why are we so fascinated with this arena of death?


Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity

Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity

Author: Simon Goldhill

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-07-18

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1400840074

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How did the Victorians engage with the ancient world? Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity is a brilliant exploration of how the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome influenced Victorian culture. Through Victorian art, opera, and novels, Simon Goldhill examines how sexuality and desire, the politics of culture, and the role of religion in society were considered and debated through the Victorian obsession with antiquity. Looking at Victorian art, Goldhill demonstrates how desire and sexuality, particularly anxieties about male desire, were represented and communicated through classical imagery. Probing into operas of the period, Goldhill addresses ideas of citizenship, nationalism, and cultural politics. And through fiction--specifically nineteenth-century novels about the Roman Empire--he discusses religion and the fierce battles over the church as Christianity began to lose dominance over the progressive stance of Victorian science and investigation. Rediscovering some great forgotten works and reframing some more familiar ones, the book offers extraordinary insights into how the Victorian sense of antiquity and our sense of the Victorians came into being. With a wide range of examples and stories, Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity demonstrates how interest in the classical past shaped nineteenth-century self-expression, giving antiquity a unique place in Victorian culture.


The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction

The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Christopher Kelly

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2006-08-24

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 0192803913

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The Roman Empire was a remarkable achievement. With a population of sixty million people, it encircled the Mediterranean and stretched from northern England to North Africa and Syria. This Very Short Introduction covers the history of the empire at its height, looking at its people, religions and social structures. It explains how it deployed violence, 'romanisation', and tactical power to develop an astonishingly uniform culture from Rome to its furthest outreaches.


A People of One Book

A People of One Book

Author: Timothy Larsen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-01-27

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 0199570094

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This book vividly recovers the lost world of the Victorians in which everyone thought, spoke, and argued through scripture. Larsen presents lively individual case studies of well known figures from different religious and sceptical traditions, including Florence Nightingale, T. H. Huxley, C. H. Spurgeon and Catherine Booth.


Liberal Epic

Liberal Epic

Author: Edward Adams

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2011-08-30

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0813931509

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In Liberal Epic, Edward Adams examines the liberal imagination’s centuries-long dependence on contradictory, and mutually constitutive, attitudes toward violent domination. Adams centers his ambitious analysis on a series of major epic poems, histories, and historical novels, including Dryden’s Aeneid, Pope’s Iliad, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Byron’s Don Juan, Scott’s Life of Napoleon, Napier’s History of the War in the Peninsula, Macaulay’s History of England, Hardy’s Dynasts, and Churchill’s military histories—works that rank among the most important publishing events of the past three centuries yet that have seldom received critical attention relative to their importance. In recovering these neglected works and gathering them together as part of a self-conscious literary tradition here defined as liberal epic, Adams provides an archaeology that sheds light on contemporary issues such as the relation of liberalism to war, the tactics for sanitizing heroism, and the appeal of violence to supposedly humane readers. Victorian Literature and Culture Series